This is your conference, and I think you have a right to know a little bit right now, in this transition period, about this guy who's going to be looking after it for you for a bit. So, I'm just going to grab a chair here.
Ovo je vaša konferencija, i mislim kako u ovom tranzicijskom trenutku imate pravo znati o nekim stvarima, o tom momku koji će se nakratko brinuti o tome za vas. Dakle, uzet ću samo stolicu.
Two years ago at TED, I think -- I've come to this conclusion -- I think I may have been suffering from a strange delusion. I think that I may have believed unconsciously, then, that I was kind of a business hero. I had this company that I'd spent 15 years building. It's called Future; it was a magazine publishing company. It had recently gone public and the market said that it was apparently worth two billion dollars, a number I didn't really understand. A magazine I'd recently launched called Business 2.0 was fatter than a telephone directory, busy pumping hot air into the bubble. (Laughter) And I was the 40 percent owner of a dotcom that was about to go public and no doubt be worth billions more. And all this had come from nothing. Fifteen years earlier, I was a science journalist who people just laughed at when I said, "I really would like to start my own computer magazine." And 15 years later, there are 100 of them and 2,000 people on staff and it was just such heady times. The date was February 2000. I thought the little graph of my business life that kind of looked a bit like Moore's Law -- ever upward and to the right -- it was going to go on forever. I mean, it had to. Right? I was in for quite a surprise.
Prije dvije godine na TED-u, mislim -- došao sam do zaključka -- kako možda patim od čudne zablude. Mislim kako sam tada nesvjesno vjerovao da sam neka vrsta poslovnog heroja. Imao sam poduzeće na čiju sam gradnju potrošio 15 godina. Zvalo se Future. Bila je to kompanija koja se bavila izdavaštvom. Nedavno je izašla na burzu, i tržište je odlučilo kako se čini da vrijedi dvije milijarde US$, brojka koju stvarno nisam razumio. Časopis kojeg sam nedavno pokrenuo, zvao se Business 2.0, bio je deblji od telefonskog imenika, zauzet pumpanjem vrućeg zraka u mjehur -- (Smijeh) -- i ja sam bio vlasnik 40% tog dot com poduzeća koje je trebalo izaći na burzu i bez sumnje biti vrijedno milijarde više. I sve je to došlo ni iz čega. 15 godina ranije, bio sam novinar koji je pratio znanost kojem su se ljudi smijali kada sam izjavio, "Stvarno bih želio započeti svoj časopis o računalima." I 15 godina poslije -- bilo ih je stotine. I 2,000 zaposlenika i -- to su bila jednostavno tako nagla vremena. Datum je bio veljača 2000. Mislio sam da će grafikon mog poslovnog života koji je pomalo ličio na Moorov zakona stalno se penje udesno -- da će tako ići vječno. Mislim, trebao je. Zar ne? Čekalo me poprilično iznenađenje.
The dotcom, ironically called Snowball, was the very last consumer web company to go public the next month before NASDAQ exploded, and I entered 18 months of business hell. I watched everything that I'd built crumbling, and it looked like all this stuff was going to die and 15 years work would have come for nothing. And it was gut wrenching. It took eight years of blood, sweat and tears to reach 350 employees, something which I was very proud of in the business. February 2001 -- in one day we laid off 350 people, and before the bloodshed was finished, 1,000 people had lost their jobs from my companies. I felt sick. I watched my own net worth falling by about a million dollars a day, every day, for 18 months. And worse than that, far worse than that, my sense of self-worth was kind of evaporating. I was going around with this big sign on my forehead: "LOSER." (Laughter) And I think what disgusts me more than anything, looking back, is how the hell did I let my personal happiness get so tied up with this business thing?
Dot com, koji se ironično zvao Gruda snijega, je bila stvarno zadnja web kompanija orjentirana kupcima koja je izašla na tržište vrijednosnica mjesec dana prije nego što je NASDAQ eksplodirao, a ja ušao u 18-mjesečni poslovni pakao. Vidio sam -- gledao sam kako se raspada sve ono što sam izgradio. I izgledalo je kao da će sve umrijeti a 15 godina rada kao da će se pretvoriti u ništa. I bilo je bolno. Trebalo nam je 8 godina krvi, znoja i suza kako bismo došli do 350 zaposlenika -- nečega na što sam bio jako ponosan. U veljači 2001. u jednom danu smo morali otpustiti 350 ljudi, i prije nego što je krvoproliće završeno 1,000 ljudi je ostalo bez posla -- u mojim kompanijama. Osjećao sam se bolesno. Gledao sam kako mi propada neto vrijednost od oko milijuna US$ dnevno, svaki dan, kroz 18 mjeseci. I gore do toga, mogo gore od toga, moj osjećaj samo-vrijednosti je nekako isparavao. Hodao sam okolo s tim velikim znakom na čelu: "GUBITNIK." (Smijeh) I ono što mi se gadi više od ičega, gledajući unazad, jest kako sam, do vraga, dopustio da moja osobna sreća postane toliko povezana s poslom kojim se bavim?
Well, in the end, we were able to save Future and Snowball, but I was, at that point, ready to move on. And to cut a long story short, here's where I came to. And the reason I'm telling this story is that I believe, from many conversations, that a lot of people in this room have been through a similar kind of rollercoaster -- emotional rollercoaster -- in the last couple years. This has been a big, big transition time, and I believe that this conference can play a big part for all of us in taking us forward to the next stage to whatever's next. The theme next year is re-birth.
Dobro, na kraju, uspjeli smo sačuvati Future i Snowball ali, u tom trenutku, bio sam spreman ići dalje, i da skratim priču, do ovdje sam došao. A razlog zašto pričam ovu priču jest što vjerujem, iz puno razgovora, kako je jako puno ljudi iz ove sobe bilo na sličnoj vrsti tobogana -- emocionalnog tobogna -- u posljednjih nekoliko godina. To je bilo veliko, veliko tranzicijsko vrijeme, i ja vjerujem kako ova konferencija može imati veliku ulogu za sve nas tako što će nas odvesti na višu razinu, koja god ona bila. Tema slijedeće godine je ponovno rođenje.
It was at the same TED two years ago when Richard and I reached an agreement on the future of TED. And at about the same time, and I think partly because of that, I started doing something that I'd forgotten about in my business focus: I started to read again. And I discovered that while I'd been busy playing business games, there'd been this incredible revolution in so many areas of interest: cosmology to psychology to evolutionary psychology to anthropology to ... all this stuff had changed. And the way in which you could think about us as a species and us as a planet had just changed so much, and it was incredibly exciting. And what was really most exciting -- and I think Richard Wurman discovered this at least 20 years before I did -- was that all this stuff is connected. It's connected; it all hooks into each other.
Bio je to na onom TEDo prije dvije godine kada smo Richard i ja postigli sporazum oko budućnosti TED-a. I gotovo u isto vrijeme, mislim djelomično upravo zbog toga, započeo sam raditi nešto što sam zabravio baveći se poslom. Počeo sam ponovno čitati. I otkrio sam kako je, dok sam ja bio zauzet igrajuči poslovne igre, došlo do nevjerojatne revolucije u jako puno područja -- od kozmologije, do psihologije, do evolucijske psihologije, do antropologije, do -- znate, sve su se te stvari promijenile. I način na koji razmišljamo o nama kao vrsti, i to je toliko uzbudljivo. I ono što je bilo najuzbudljivije, a mislim kako je Richard Wurman to otkrio barem 20 godina prije mene, jest da je sve to međusobno povezano. Povezano je. Sve je povezano jedno s drugim.
We talk about this a lot, and I thought about trying to give an example of this. So, just one example: Madame de Gaulle, the wife of the French president, was famously asked once, "What do you most desire?" And she answered, "A penis." And when you think about it, it's very true: what we all most desire is a penis -- or "happiness" as we say in English. (Laughter) And something ... good luck with that one in the Japanese translation room. (Laughter) (Applause)
Pričamo o tome puno, i mislim kako bi bilo dobro dati primjer toga, samo jedan primjer. Gospođu de Gaulle, suprugu francuskog predsjednika, su jednom pitali: "Što najviše želite?" A ona je odgovorila: "a penis." I kada razmišljate o tome, to je istina. Ono što svi najviše želimo jest "a penis". Ili, kako mi na engleskom kažemo "happiness" (sreća). (Smijeh) I nešto -- OK, sretno s ovime svima vama koji prevodite ovo na japanski. (Smijeh) (Pljesak)
But something as basic as happiness, which 20 years ago would have been just something for discussion in the church or mosque or synagogue, today it turns out that there's dozens of TED-like questions that you can ask about it, which are really interesting. You can ask about what causes it biochemically: neuroscience, serotonin, all that stuff. You can ask what are the psychological causes of it: nature? Nurture? Current circumstance? Turns out that the research done on that is absolutely mind-blowing. You can view it as a computing problem, an artificial intelligence problem: do you need to incorporate some sort of analog of happiness into a computer brain to make it work properly? You can view it in sort of geopolitical terms and say, why is it that a billion people on this planet are so desperately needy that they have no possibility of happiness, and whereas almost all the rest of them, regardless of how much money they have -- whether it's two dollars a day or whatever -- are almost equally happy on average? Or you can view it as an evolutionary psychology kind of thing: did our genes invent this as a kind of trick to get us to behave in certain ways? The ant's brain, parasitized, to make us behave in certain ways so that our genes would propagate? Are we the victims of a mass delusion? And so on, and so on.
Ali nešto toliko osnovno kao sreća, što bi prije 20 godina bilo nešto za raspravu u crkvi ili džamiji ili sinagogi, danas se pokazalo kako postoji cijeli niz TED-ovskih pitanja koja možete postavljati o tome i koja su stvarno interesantna. Možete se zapitati što to uzrokuje biokemijski; u neuroznanosti, serotonin, sve te stvari. Možete se zapitati koji su psihološki uzroci tome? Priroda, odgoj, trenutačne prilike? Ispada kako su istraživanja na tu temu fantastična. Možete na to gledati kao na računalni problem, problem umjetne inteligencije. Zašto -- je li potrebno ugraditi nešto poput sreće u mozak računala kako bi ono radilo ispravno? Možete na to gledati kao na neku vrstu geopolitičkih uvjeta i zapitati se, zašto je milijarda ljudi na ovom planetu toliko očajna u svojim osnovnim potrebama tako da nemaju nikakve mogućnosti za sreću, dok je ostatak u isto vrijeme, bez obzira koliko novca ima, bilo da je to dva dolara dnevno ili bilo koliko, gotovo jednako sretan u prosjeku? Ili na to možete gledati kao na problem evolucijske psihologije. Zašto bi naši - jesu li naši geni osmislili to kao neku vrstu trika kako bi nas nagnali da se ponašamo na određeni način? Mozak mrava, napadnut, kako bi nas nagnao da se ponašamo na određeni način kako bi se naši geni prenosili? Jesmo li mi žrtve masovne zablude? I tako dalje, i tako dalje.
To understand even something as important to us as happiness, you kind of have to branch off in all these different directions, and there's nowhere that I've discovered -- other than TED -- where you can ask that many questions in that many different directions. And so, it's the profound thing that Richard talks about: to understand anything, you just need to understand the little bits; a little bit about everything that surrounds it. And so, gradually over these three days, you start off kind of trying to figure out, "Why am I listening to all this irrelevant stuff?" And at the end of the four days, your brain is humming and you feel energized, alive and excited, and it's because all these different bits have been put together. It's the total brain experience, we're going to ... it's the mental equivalent of the full body massage. (Laughter) Every mental organ addressed. It really is.
Kako bismo razumijeli nešto toliko važno poput sreće, moramo se razgranati u svim tim različitim smjerovima, i ne postoji bolje mjesto za to od TED-a gdje možete pitati toliko puno pitanja, na toliko puno načina. I tako, uzvišena je ona stvar o kojoj Richard govori: Kako bismo razumjeli bilo što, moramo razumijeti male dijelove. Male dijelove svega što nas okružuje. I tako ćete, postepeno kroz ova tri dana, početi na neki način pokušati shvatiti, zašto slušam sve te nevažne stvari? I na kraju četvrtog dana, vaš mozak zuji i vi se osjećate puni energije, živi i uzbuđeni, i to je zato jer su se svi ti mali dijelovi sastavili u jednu cjelinu. To je potpuno misaono iskustvo, koje ćemo -- to je mentalni ekvivalent potpune masaže tijela. (Smijeh) Svi mentalni organi su obrađeni. Stvarno jesu.
Enough of the theory, Chris. Tell us what you're actually going to do, all right? So, I will. Here's the vision for TED.
Dosta teorije, Chris. Reci nam što ćeš zapravo napraviti, u redu? I hoću. Ovdje je vizija za TED.
Number one: do nothing. This thing ain't broke, so I ain't gonna fix it. Jeff Bezos kindly remarked to me, "Chris, TED is a really great conference. You're going to have to fuck up really badly to make it bad." (Laughter) So, I gave myself the job title of TED Custodian for a reason, and I will promise you right here and now that the core values that make TED special are not going to be interfered with. Truth, curiosity, diversity, no selling, no corporate bullshit, no bandwagoning, no platforms. Just the pursuit of interest, wherever it lies, across all the disciplines that are represented here. That's not going to be changed at all.
Broj jedan: ne čini ništa. Ta stvar nije pokvarena, tako da je neću pokušati popraviti. Jeff Bezos mi je ljubazno napomenuo, "Chris, TED je stvarno sjajna konferencija. Morati ćeš nešto gadno zabrljati kako bi je učinio lošom." (Smijeh) Tako da sam si dao titulu TED kuratora (domara, kustosa, čuvara) s razlogom, i obećajem vam ovdje i sada kako se sržne vrijednosti koje čine TED posebnim neće mijenjati, neće se u njih petljati. Istina, znatiželja, raznolikost, nema prodaje, nema korporativnih sranja, nema oportunizma, nema platformi. Samo potraga za interesima, gdje god oni bili, kroz sve discipline koje su predstavljene ovdje. To se nikada neće promijeniti.
Number two: I am going to put together an incredible line up of speakers for next year. The time scale on which TED operates is just fantastic after coming out of a magazine business with monthly deadlines. There's a year to do this, and already -- I hope to show you a bit later -- there's 25 or so terrific speakers signed up for next year. And I'm getting fantastic help from the community; this is just such a great community. And combined, our contacts reach pretty much everyone who's interesting in the country, if not the planet. It's true.
Broj dva: spojiti ću cijeli niz nevjerojatnih govornika za sljedeću godinu. Vremenska skala na kojoj TED operira je jednostavno fantastična nakon što sam izašao iz posla s časopisima koji imaju mjesečne rokove. Imamo cijelu godinu na raspolaganju i već, kao što se nadam da ću vam pokazati malo kasnije, imamo oko 25 sjajnih govornika za slijedeću godinu. Imam dobivam fantastičnu pomoć od zajednice -- ovo je tako sjajna zajednica i kombinirano, naši kontakti dopiru do svakoga tko je interesantan u našoj zemlji, ako ne i na Planetu. To je istina.
Number three: I do want to, if I can, find a way of extending the TED experience throughout the year a little bit. And one key way that we're going to do this is to introduce this book club. Books kind of saved me in the last couple years, and that's a gift that I would like to pass on. So, when you sign up for TED2003, every six weeks you'll get a care package with a book or two and a reason why they're linked to TED. They may well be by a TED speaker, and so we can get the conversation going during the year and come back next year having had the same intellectual, emotional journey. I think it will be great.
Broj tri: želim, ako mogu, želim pronaći način da proširimo TED iskustvo na cijelu godinu. I jedan od načina na koji ćemo to postići jest predstavljanje knjiškog kluba. Knjige su me nekako spasile posljednjih godina, i to je poklon koji bih volio proslijediti, tako kada ćete se prijaviti za TED2003, svakih 6 tjedana dobiti ćete paket s knjigom ili dvije i objašnjenjem na koji su način povezane s TED-om. Mogle bi biti od TEDovog govornika i tako možemo potaknuti razgovor tijekom cijele godine i vratiti se sljedeće godine s jednakim intelektualnim, emcionalnim putovanjem. Mislim kako bi to bilo sjajno.
And then, fourthly: I want to mention the Sapling Foundation, which is the new owner of TED. What Sapling's ownership means is that all of the proceeds of TED will go towards the causes that Sapling stands for. And more important, I think, the ideas that are exhibited and realized here are ideas that the foundation can use, because there's fantastic synergy. Already, just in the last few days, we've had so many people talking about stuff that they care about, that they're passionate about, that can make a difference in the world, and the idea of getting this group of people together -- some of the causes that we believe in, the money that this conference can raise and the ideas -- I really believe that that combination will, over time, make a difference. I'm incredibly excited about that. In fact, I don't think, overall, that I've been as excited by anything ever in my life. I'm in this for the long run, and I would be greatly honored and excited if you'll come on this journey with me.
I na kraju, četiri, želim spomenuti Sapling fondaciju, koja je novi vlasnik TED-a. Ono što Saplingovo vlasništvo znači jest da će sav dobitak TED-a ići u smjeru onoga za što se Sapling fondacija zalaže. I, još važnije, mislim kako ideje koje se ovdje izlažu i realiziraju, predstavljaju ideje koja fondacija može upotrijebiti jer postoji fantastična sinergija. Već, u samo nekoliko ovih dana, imali smo toliko puno ljudi koji govore o stvarima do kojih im je stalo, oko kojih su strastveni, koje mogu napraviti promjenu u svijetu, i ideja okupljanja svih tih ljudi -- nekih uvjerenja u koje vjerujemo, novca koji ova konferencija može prikupiti i ideja -- stvarno vjerujem kako će ta kombinacija, tijekom vremena napraviti promjenu. Nevjerojatno sam uzbuđen zbog toga. U stvari, mislim, ukupno gledajući kako ni oko čeg drugog u svom životu nisam bio toliko uzbuđen. Ja se vidim u ovome na dugi rok i bio bih počašćen i uzbuđen kada biste mi se pridružili na tom putu.